Certain vegetable waxes, such as carnauba or ouricury wax or certain mineral waxes, such as montan wax, both basic and modified, have long been conventionally utilized to impart highly beneficial hardness and oil retention properties to ink systems, such as carbon paper inks, as well as to enhance the dispersion of solid particulate matter in diverse products incorporating readily liquifiable carrier vehicles. The continually increasing price of such vegetable and mineral wax materials, coupled with the uncertainties attendant their common sources of supply, has forced manufacturers to utilize continually decreasing amounts thereof in carbon paper inks and similar materials for selective functioning as "flow waxes" to obtain satisfactory dispersion properties therein, with other and less expensive materials being substituted therefor to impart the desired hardness and oil retention properties to the product. Even in such reduced amounts, however, the material costs for such vegetable and mineral waxes have risen to such an extent as to pose serious economic problems for the manufacturers of carbon paper inks and similar products.
The problem is one of long standing. Prior efforts in the art have been directed to the provision of domestically available synthetic waxes that are possessed of at least some desirable flow agent properties. While such synthetic waxes have provided some advantageous flow agent properties, they have not, as yet, provided the highly beneficial hardness and oil retention properties that are normally required in inks and like products that include a normally solid but readily liquifiable carrier vehicle. Exemplary of the foregoing are the modified synthetic waxes disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,890,124, 2,890,125 and 3,163,548. These synthetic waxes, unfortunately, have likewise been characterized by progressively increasing costs for the resultant product and such has operated to accentuate rather than to alleviate the basic problem.
A more recent synthetic wax base product is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,941,608. Here again however, continually increasing raw material and processing costs have resulted in progressively increasing costs for the resultant product.
Apart from the increasing cost factor as above noted, the resultant economically dictated utilization of increasing amounts of paraffin wax and other substitutes for the above named vegetable and mineral waxes has increased the likelihood of detrimental gelling of the ink systems and other products being formulated therefrom.
As noted above, montan waxes, of both the basic and modified type, have been long recognized as having the ability to impart beneficial hardness and oil retention properties to, as well as the ability to enhance the dispersion of solid particulate matter in, diverse products utilizing readily liquifiable carrier vehicles. Basic montan wax is a mineral wax, solvent extracted from lignite, and is made up of a complex mixture of high molecular esters of long-chain aliphatic acids and wax alcohols. Both basic montan wax and chemically treated or modified montan waxes are hard waxes of microcrystalline structure and are commercially available products.